Annotation: What images appeared in the minds of people in the 18th century when they thought of Russia? For historians, this is far from idle musing. We can hardly reconstruct past realities in detail, but with extant evidence we are able to reconstruct reality as it was lived – that which was in the minds of people. They made decisions and acted on the basis of these perceptions of reality. Today it has became clear that West European ideas about people living in the East were evanescent, and that their vivid fantasies were based on fears, superstitions and fragments of Biblical and classical mythologies. Yelena Vishlenkova's book is an attempt to understand the cultural world of Russians through the prism of its visual culture, and to trace its role in the way the empire was understood and itself in empire. Vishlenkova analyzes images of the peoples of Russia, the conditions of their creation, and how they existed in culture. In what ways were ethnic stereotypes, scientific theories and fantasies visualized? How were agreements about physiognomy, ethical agreements about beauty and ugliness, used to show the cultural and psychological characteristics of different groups of people? Vishlenkova traces the gradual formation, with the help of visual culture, of understandings of the "nation," and reveals the cultural borders between groups of people that existed in the minds of Russians in the "pre-national" era. Vishlenkova's research is based on paintings, caricatures and national costumes. She is interested both in self-consciousness, as expressed in visual culture, and in stereotypical ideas of Russians in the minds of foreigners, as reflected in paintings.